The Colorado Parole Board has started releasing some inmates from prison early — about 115 more last month than in January 2007.

The board is banking that treating such inmates for drug and alcohol abuse will do more to keep them from committing new crimes than the old policy of simply warehousing them, and then releasing them, without any such treatment.

The Post supports the policy, which began in the waning days of Republican Gov. Bill Owens’ administration and accelerated after Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter’s appointees became a majority on the parole board.

The policy has its roots in a 2003 law by Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, that increased treatment for drug and alcohol abuse for prison inmates and paid for such treatment by a slight reduction in some sentences.

We backed the 2003 law, but we also urge Ritter to monitor the new program closely and to focus primarily on non-violent offenders to reduce the risk of a violent offender re-offending. That would quickly undercut any public support for treatment programs.

Gordon supports Ritter’s actions to ease the pressure prison costs have placed on the state budget.

“This is the first year since 1992 that prison budgets haven’t gone up by double digits,” Gordon said. “Ritter only asked for a 6 percent increase for prisons this year. If we’d been able to limit prisons to 6 percent a year since 1992, we’d have $255 million more to spend on other things this year.”

More important than the cost savings in Gordon’s view is that treating substance abuse, teaching illiterate prisoners to read and providing job training is more effective at ensuring that inmates won’t commit more crimes when they do get out than merely tacking a few months onto their sentences without treatment.

Drug and/or alcohol abuse is a factor in 75 percent of the crimes that land people in our prisons, Gordon said. It’s rare to go to prison simply for using drugs, but people may be incarcerated because they robbed a home to get money for drugs or beat up someone while drunk.

Despite political bombast urging a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” response to crime, a typical inmate serves just 42 months in Colorado before being released, Gordon said. Turning such offenders loose without addressing problems of drug and alcohol abuse that put them into prison in the first place is obviously self-defeating.

State Rep. Rob Witwer, R-Golden, is concerned that Ritter may be moving too fast with his new parole policy — especially because a special commission on criminal justice created by the legislature last year has not yet issued its report. But his worries are not shared by Rep. Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, who sponsored the bill creating that commission.

“What the governor is doing [through administrative measures] is in keeping with what those of us on the commission want to do. Our own work focuses on broader questions — such as which offenders go to prison and which can be sent to community corrections, and possibly changes in sentences. Changes like that can’t be done by the parole board, they have to take the form of legislation,” Carroll said.

The question of when or if a criminal gets parole is never easy, and the board is certain to make mistakes. But not trying to attack the root causes of crime, including drug and alcohol abuse and joblessness, would be the biggest mistake of all.